Excerpt #1 From Lance Armstrong's War

Chapter 3: Inside the Vault

"The king! Where is the king?"

Dr. Michele Ferrari, Armstrong's 50-year-old trainer, stood on the cobbled street with his long arms outstretched in the golden Spanish sunlight. He was dark-haired and darty eyed. He wore a shiny robins-egg-blue sweatsuit, a red nylon backpack, and a broad, teasing smile.

"The king, he is late," Ferrari announced in the manner of the town crier, gesturing theatrically toward the tall wooden doors. "But that is why he is the king, no? A king should not have to hurry."

Ferrari was here because he possesses what is widely acknowledged as one of the two most brilliant minds in cycling. The other belonged to fellow Italian Dr. Luigi Cecchini, 60, who trains several of Armstrong's top rivals. Ferrari and Cecchini, who were former colleagues, were usually described in the media as "notorious." Exactly what notorious meant was difficult to say, but it seemed based on three qualificiations: 1) Ferrari and Cecchini, who each worked as independent contractors, had trained many extremely successful cyclists; 2) Italian authorities and the European cycling media had raised questions over whether they had used entirely legal means to do so; and 3) it was a compelling notion. Can any reader remain uninterested in a story that mentions one of the planet's best athletes being advised by the notorious Doctor Ferrari?  

By any measure, Michele (pronounced mi-KEL-ay) Ferrari had been a key part of Armstrong's Tour preparation since 1999, and part of his life since they had met in 1995. The Italian worked in parallel with Armstrong's longtime personal coach, Chris Carmichael. Carmichael, who lives in Colorado Springs, gathered and analyzed Armstrong's training data via email. Ferrari, who lived in northern Italy, spent a good portion of the season with Armstrong, including five to six weeks immediately prior to the Tour, an event Ferrari was famous for not attending.

"Eh, the Tour, it is a big show," Ferrari said, frowning. "I do not wish to go to a big show."

Due to his regular presence, Ferrari had been granted the honor of a nickname: Dr. Evil. It was a good nickname, partly because of Ferrari's dark features and partly because it poked fun at the pesky cloud of questions that followed him, questions that Armstrong had always dismissed with the affirmation that Ferrari was a smart, honest trainer who provided Armstrong with training programs and advice, period. As it happened, Ferrari was currently on trial on three counts of doping-related offenses in Italian court (charges against Cecchini had been dropped in 2001 due to lack of evidence). Ferrari's trial did not involve Armstrong,  who has always tested clean, and who expressed confidence that his trainer would be acquitted. But it was a concern. My conversations with Ferrari took place, in part, because I agreed not to ask questions about doping.

"I believe all these charges are groundless," Armstrong told the newspapers. "Michele is telling the truth. I will back him until I see evidence otherwise. The man is extremely talented; he's more than a coach, he's like a mathematician or a physicist."

As mathematics went, this qualified as an important day. Dr. Evil had flown to Girona from his home in northern Italy to test Armstrong's condition for the first time in 2004-to listen to the engine, as Ferrari put it. The previous night at dinner, Ferrari had invited me to come along. He'd taken my card, and run it past Armstrong, and phoned me with the news. "The King, he says you can come," he said.

But as the clock ticked and his highness did not show, Ferrari's smile grew broader and a touch strained. Ferrari had the same concerns as everyone else about the challenges of the coming year, plus a few that were his alone. Originally the plan had been to train and test Armstrong a week ago at the remote island of Tenerife, off the coast of Africa, which was one of their favorite training haunts. But Armstrong had canceled at the last minute and had told Ferrari to come to Girona instead.

"I think I know why," Ferrari had said, looking distressed at dinner the previous night. "It was Sheryl Crow's birthday. He wanted to be with her, to show her this place." He grimaced and took a sip of his wine. 

When he talked about Armstrong, Ferrari's face functioned as a kind of Geiger counter, twitching and flexing in response to the level of risk. It was easy to pick out the risk factors, because Ferrari stretched out the word in his rich Italian accent. Thusly, muscles became maaaaahhhssscles. Stress became streeeeehhhsss. Blood became blaaaaahhhd. And the latest factor-a mathematically significant factor, in Ferrari's view-was that his newly divorced client appeared to be in laaaaahhhve. 

"Marriage, divorce, these things happen," Ferrari said, fiddling with his wineglass. "With Lance, they perhaps happen more quickly."

Here in Girona, the effects of the Sheryl factor were already being felt. For instance, as Ferrari outlined the coming season's schedule with Armstrong, I inquired where their March session would take place. Ferrari's lips pursed; his forehead suddenly resembled an accordion.

"Lance is talking about going to Nice," Ferrari said, extending the word. "But this makes no sense to go there in March, it is not time to do those tests."  Then he raised his finger in the a-ha gesture. "But I think that perhaps he wishes to show Sheryl the Cote d'Azur."

I responded by telling Ferrari about a recent New York Post gossip column which said that Sheryl Crow wanted to have Armstrong's baby.

At the word "baby," the Geiger counter began to spark and smoke: Ferrari's eyes bugged out, his head tipped sideways until his cheek was almost touching his au jus.

"Sheryl is preeehhhgnant? Now?" he asked incredulously. He regained his composure only when I reassured him several times that the article had said no such thing, that it was merely gossip. It didn't seem to relax him much.

"Ahhh," he said, mopping sweat from his brow. "Ahhh, well."

Ferrari's attentiveness was shared by many in Armstrong's circle. Cyclists' superstition about crashing was exceeded only by their superstition about their bodies in general, especially food and sex. Routine prohibitions include:

No ice cream, which causes indigestion
No air conditioners (which causes illness due to bacteria growing on the filter)
No hot sauce (indigestion)
No carbonated water (diarrhea)
No soft center of bread (same)
No tomato sauce (acidity)
No chocolate mousse (excessive sweating)
No shaving of legs the night before a race (energy lost in regrowing hair)
Minimal contact between skin and water (which softens the muscles) A few riders take this far enough so as to shower with uniforms on; another rider, Isidro Nozal of Liberty Seguros, is believed (with pungent evidence) to forego showers during a stage race.

Few of these prohibitions make scientific sense, of course, but that is not the point. They are ancient laws, handed down by elders and violated at a racer's imminent peril. And none is more ancient or perilous than the presence of a woman, except perhaps a woman who wishes to become pregnant. Celibacy before races is routine-two weeks before a one-day race, six weeks before a grand tour, advised Irish great Sean Kelly. To prevent temptation, wives and girlfriends are not permitted in team hotels or at team dinners, and certainly never during races-a Spanish rider was booted from his team last year for that offense. When Stephen Roche's chain fell off in the 1981 Tour, his director remarked, "This is the kind of thing that happens when women are brought to races." But word was already out: not only had Sheryl Crow stayed in Armstrong's room during training camp, but she was eating meals with the team. 

"She's what?" said president of USA Cycling and Armstrong's friend, Jim Ochowicz, when he was informed of the arrangement. "She's where?"

"This is not completely usual," Ferrari had said delicately last night. "But what is usual for Lance is not usual for everyone. If it makes him happy, then it is good. Happiness, that is a good factor."

Back on the street in Girona, Ferrari found his own measure of happiness in the arrival of Floyd Landis and George Hincapie, Armstrong's teammates and two of the fifteen or so American cyclists who make their homes in Girona. Hincapie was a dark-haired and languid New Yorker; Landis a red-haired and springy Pennsylvanian. Hincapie and Landis, veteran Tour riders, knew Ferrari well, having been tested by him many times previous.

Hincapie waved his hello, leaned his bike against a tree and quickly slipped in to a wicker chair in obedience to the cycling's first rule of energy conservation: Never stand when you can sit; never sit when you can lie down. Never walk, that goes without saying. Walking, particularly up stairs, makes their legs ache. Cyclists congregate in Girona for several reasons-it's near the Pyrenees, the cost of living is lower than in France-but also because its close-knit medieval layout keeps perambulation to a happy minimum. Armstrong, who lives on the second floor, frequently uses the elevator.

Landis, though, did not sit down. Neither did Ferrari, who shifted his weight from leg to leg.

"We must search for the king," Ferrari said. "We should perhaps have a look inside, no?"

"He's been late the last couple days," Landis said in a joking tone.

"Really?" Ferrari leaned in, interested. This is not a joke to him."How late? Half an hour?"

"Don't sweat it, Michele," Landis said, trying to placate the doctor. "Ten, fifteen minutes, tops."

"Hmmm," Ferrari said. "So we go in now, yes?"

With the lanky Ferrari in the lead, we ventured through the tall wooden doors, through the iron-bar gate, and into the shared inner courtyard of the renovated palace that holds nine apartments, including Armstrong's. Light filtered down, showing smooth stone walls and balconies on three sides, an abrupt change from the rougher textures outside. The impression was of entering a bank vault, and it wasn't lessened by the blueish glint in the security camera lens aimed at a pair of massive steel doors at the courtyard's far end.

Camera-like himself, Ferrari strode across the stone floor and poked his head through a crack in the doors, finding not the hoped-for Armstrong but rather the tall, amiable figure of Mike Anderson, Armstrong's mechanic and assistant, who was prepping a bike for today's ride.  

Anderson pushed the steel doors further open, revealing with a B-movie creak the sanctus sanctorum, a dark, narrow, stone-walled room about the size of a studio apartment. A dozen or so bikes dangled from ceiling hooks, wheels and tires were stacked like cordwood along the walls, the wooden workbench held a neat assortment of shoes, helmets, and shark-toothed cogsets.

One way to look at this room was to imagine all the stuff that was not here-the millions of dollars in bike frames, wheels, helmets, and shoes that had failed to pass the through the needle's eye of the Armstrong standards. Everything in here had been sorted, tested, and stamped with the highest mark of excellence, namely that it had officially been designated by its curator as The Shit. That's what Armstrong called something he liked, and when he really liked something, an event which happened perhaps three times a year, he granted that item his ultimate accolade: he said it will kill them.

Here then, outlined in white halogen light, lay the Museum of Shit That Will Kill Them. There, glistening silver on the workbench, were the new Nike shoes with the Texas flag on one buckle and the world-champion rainbow insignia on the other.  There, in the drawer below, were the 20 identical Selle San Marco brand saddles, the ones Armstrong had just sorted through as if he were selecting a cantaloupe, squeezing each until he found one or two keepers. There, above a bright plastic kiddie car and lawn mower, hung Crow's birthday present, the buffed out silver team-edition Trek, along with a helmet inscribed with her equally new nickname: Juanita Cuervo ("cuervo" is Spanish for "crow.") And there, swoopy and black in its stand, stood the piece de resistance, the new top-secret time-trial bike, the one that Trek had been building since the summit meeting in Austin last August, the one whose features Armstrong had cryptically referred to in the press, about whose details the mechanics had been sworn to secrecy.

Standing just outside the room, Landis and Hincapie couldn't help but sneak an admiring look around. Ferrari glanced impatiently, unimpressed. He was a cyclist himself, but these were not the machines in which he was interested.

The courtyard echoed with the promising tap-dancer click of bike cleats, and Ferrari's eyes flashed hopefully to see- not Armstrong but Juanita Cuervo herself, looking decidedly un-pregnant in lavender top, black tights, and cycling shoes that, while fine for a bike, produced rather less elegance on a stone floor.

"Hello hello hello," she called.

Crow click-clacked gamely toward us, a fluoro-pink piece of gum being worked over by what a British music reviewer famously deemed "the sexiest mouth in rock." She smiled and did her nice-to-meet-yous. With her new friend Odessa Gunn, the wife of American cyclist Levi Leipheimer, she seized her bike from Anderson and wheeled it into the courtyard

"You ready, girlfriend?" Gunn asked.

"Ready as I'm gonna be, babe" Juanita replied, grasping the saddle and handlebars in the classic cyclist's pose. She leaned it casually against her thigh as she cinched her helmet.

Hincapie and Landis watched with anesthetized expressions. They'd met her before, at training camp, at a party, but it was still a lot to absorb: Sheryl Crow, a rocker chick-Eric Clapton's old squeeze, for God's sake, a millionaire Grammy-winner-kitting up for a morning spin.

"You look ready, George," Crow said.

"Nuh-uh." Hincapie managed a shy smile. "I don't feel ready."

"Now now," Crow warned. "Don't try to fool me."

Crow made micro-adjustments to the sleeves of her lavender top. She checked her shoes. She lifted her bike and thudded it testingly against the ground.

Landis and Hincapie stared with respectful detachment, like amateur chemists who had accidentally created a powerful explosive. It didn't make sense-Sheryl Crow, here, with them. Cyclists were dorks, weren't they? That was the term they had used in high school, still used: cycle dorks. As in, skinny, equipment-obsessed Euro-dweebs. Like most American cyclists, they'd always identified themselves as un-cool-in fact, that was the cool thing about it, the spectacular private un-coolness of it, so much that their sport became their secret. And here was this MTV star, with her juicy pink gum and her tawny hair who not only wanted to be with them; she wanted to be like them, with the tights and the duckfoot shoes. They stood transfixed, memorizing her outline in case she should evaporate.

To their left, out of Crow's of sight, Ferrari's face started twitching and clicking. He had heard that Crow would be around. . .but riding a bike? Riding with Lance? His eyebrows began to jump seismically.

Behind Ferrari and Crow, a large yellow duffel bag on his shoulder, the King walked into the courtyard. This was the way he entered most rooms, checking things out from the jump with clear, assessing glances-or, preferably, even before he came into the room, doing the various background-checking that he calls his homework. He was forever surprising people with how much he already knew about them-;a flattering, slightly disconcerting moment for the visitor, but one that Armstrong handled with marked casualness. Because it was not his knowing that concerned him. It was yours.

We shook hands, his grip cool and light. We chatted for awhile. He knew our family had moved to Girona. I asked about schools. 

"My wife looked at sending our oldest-" he came up short. "My ex-wife, I mean," he said, enunciating the words as if practicing the phrase.

He stared at the ground, kept going.

"But the Spanish school day is really long, and when the kids are young, you want to be with them. So that wasn't going to work for her-for us, I mean."

He blinked. For a half-second, it was officially awkward: his rock star girlfriend a few steps away, his kids' toys gathering dust in the bike room, his pronouns getting tangled up.  He had an air of surprise.

Then he blinked and looked around intently, and the moment was gone-not dissipated, but actively pressed away. He started over, bending and rooting through his yellow duffel. He pulled out a map.

"You guys ready?" he called to Gunn.

"Almost," she said.

"I'm a map freak," he said, shaking the map open. "There are some roads out here you guys wouldn't believe."

"I believe," Crow piped in, "after what I saw the other day."

"There's better," Armstrong said to her, tipping his head, letting us mark his meaning. "There are some spots that are crazy cool, way wilder than that, like the back side of Hells Angels."

"The back side of Hells Angels," Anderson echoed appreciatively.

"We'll get you up there," Armstrong said to Crow. "You'll love it."

"I know you will," she said, and the sexiest mouth smiled, and everybody else couldn't help but smile too, even Dr. Evil. All that ex-wife awkwardness of a moment ago was a million miles away-or, rather it was still there, buried but somehow fueling the quickness and the energy of the new thing, this moment, now. 

"Here, and here, and here," Armstrong said, pointing to the map, where only he could see. "Oh, and over here too. This, this is a great spot."

Armstrong is a map guy, in the largest sense of the word. No matter how marvelous some place is, there's always some place higher and more beautiful, and he knows exactly where it is and he wants to show you. To be with him is to receive doses of certitude and mystery, together. After he won his first few Tours, Armstrong's friends would occasionally get calls at odd hours, and pick up to hear Armstrong's voice asking, "Guess where I am right now?" Those calls tailed off for a while, but this winter he started making them again.

Now Armstrong walked toward Anderson. "Ready?" Meaning, is the bike ready?

"Ready," Anderson replied in the practiced, easy rhythm of an air-traffic controller, and just then Armstrong's cell phone rang.

"Yeah, what's going on?" Armstrong answered. "Yeah, yeah. How come?" He listened, staring intently at the floor drain. "No, I'll take care of it. Right."

This conversation was repeated in various forms, dozens of times a day. Sometimes it was about Tailwind Sports, the management company that ran the Postal team (and which Armstrong partly owned), or his new top-secret bike (which he was in the process of finding brakes for), or about his race schedule, or about the pending deal with Coca Cola, or about any of a zillion projects for his cancer foundation, or about how they were going to sue the everloving shit out of the Weekly World News if they published that photo of Lance with a pregnant woman and claimed falsely it was his love child (the woman was Allison Anderson, his mechanic's wife), or how the President of Spain was asking President Bush to ask Lance to ride the Tour of Spain, or how his buddy Korioth might come out in March, or how Bruyneel had just seen a photo of Ullrich (he looked fat!), or how his agent had heard that Matt Damon might be interested in playing Armstrong in the movie they were putting together on Armstrong's life, or how there was a cyclist in California who had just been killed by a mountain lion and could Armstrong write a quick letter to be read at the funeral, nothing big, just a few words, please.

"It seems like he has about five lives, living them all at once," says Haven Hamilton, the wife of cyclist Tyler Hamilton and neighbor. "When you're with him, it's all so casual, and then later when you think about everything that's going on, you realize that his life is. . ." she struggles for the word. "Humongous."

Well-meaning friends over the years have tried to persuade Armstrong to hire an assistant. But he won't. And why should he? He had a system: He had his BlackBerry-or CrackBerry as he called it, giving a nod to its addictive hold. He had a few trusted guys, his satellites, each assigned to a specific orbit. There were Ferrari and Carmichael for training, Stapleton and Bart Knaggs at Capital Sports & Entertainment (CS&E) for sponsorship and legal stuff, Mark Higgins and Jogi Muller for media, Bruyneel for team and tactics and equipment and everything else, Scott Daubert for Trek bike stuff. The satellites knew the rules-;four or five lines per email, max. Quick updates and questions-;nothing squishy, everything wound nice and tight, like a super ball. All these projectiles came whizzing in, and he fired them back with spin, challenging, provoking, pushing, all of it adding up to a hot infochemical flow that tracked his rivals and his many projects. Hire an assistant? This was the interaction he lived for, to answer and then to ask a question, which was itself another answer. Guess where I am right now?

"We have three rules," said Bill Stapleton, his agent. "Keep. Lance. Informed. Nothing bothers him more than not knowing something."

"Lance has a very well-defined decision-making mechanism within him," said Knaggs, a former riding buddy who works as CS&E's marketing director. Prior to his present job, Knaggs designed artificial-intelligence software. 

"He got confidence that he was smart through cancer," Knaggs continued. "Before, he'd say he was just a dumb bike racer. But after, he realized there wasn't anything magic to oncology, to anything, and he started getting involved in everything. And by everything, I do mean everything."

Like all effective software, Armstrong's mind functioned along a handful of basic principles:

 <!--[if !supportLists]-->1)      <!--[endif]-->Everything was evaluated on a binary scale. On or off, good or bad. "Lance hates gray areas; he doesn't have time for them," Knaggs said. "He sets out to determine very quickly if something or someone is useful to him. If you're not useful, you won't be around long."

 
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2)      <!--[endif]-->Attacking was better than defending. In situations of conflict, Armstrong provoked, asked questions, inflicted himself. "He's only comfortable when he's pushing people to the next level, upping the ante, daring you to match him," Carmichael said. "Whatever the game, whatever the contest, Lance's message is, 'You're a pussy if you don't match me.' And he's tough to match." 

 
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3)      <!--[endif]-->He was able to forget. "You could give him the most horrible piece of news," his chiropractor Jeff Spencer said. "And he would be able to absorb it, deal with it, and move past it very quickly and never, ever, ever go back to it. He has no fear paralysis, and it frees him up to be optimistic about everything, even when it makes no rational sense to be."

This third quality was perhaps the most interesting, because it was selective. Armstrong was skilled at remembering his detractors, to the point of repeating their names to himself during training rides. His forgetfulness, rather, applied mostly to his own vulnerabilities, as the following story attested.

At 7 p.m. the night before the 2003 Tour, Armstrong found himself unable to walk. His hip, which he'd injured in a crash three weeks previous, had become jammed in its socket. He was due onstage in half an hour for the team-introduction ceremony, but he was unable to climb a single stair. He hobbled to the bus and beckoned for Mr. Magic, Jeff Spencer.

There was no time for X-rays or a full work-up. With the music and crowd noise rising, Armstrong laid on his back on the gray leather seat. Spencer leaned and pulled sharply. The air resounded with a concussive pop. 

"It was horrifying," Spencer said later. "I was positive I'd broken or torn something. It wasn't the kind of sound that comes from a body, more like something you hear in the forest. Like a ten-inch-thick dry tree snapping across a hollow log."

For a moment the two men stared at each other. Then Armstrong stood up. Flexed the hip. Tested it on some stairs. Then thanked Spencer and walked off the bus and onto the stage. Armstrong never spoke to Spencer about it again.

"For you or me or almost anyone else on the planet, that's an unbelievably traumatic, scary moment," Spencer said. "He clicks past it, and gets on with the next question."

Put together, the three qualities form a potent combination, a system of ascertaining, attacking, and forgetting that requires vast quantities of fresh stimulus, fresh contests to engage in. The process is applied with equal vigor to each question, be they small or large. Who do we pick for the Tour team? What are tech stocks going to do? What's Ullrich doing right now? And one that seemed to be on his mind at the moment-what the hell was this book all about?

I'd done the customary journalistic groundwork, written letters explaining the book, explained my project to Stapleton and others. But Armstrong wasn't about to fling open his door on my say-so (and frankly, I would have been surprised if he had). No, this book was a question to be analyzed, another game to be played. I recalled speaking with the journalist Eric Hagerman, who had worked six months on a perceptive profile of Armstrong for Outside magazine.

"His people were doing background checks, interviewing people after I spoke with them, watching me every step" Hagerman had told me. "I felt like I was reporting on Watergate."

Due to cycling's obscurity in America, Armstrong had enjoyed an unprecedented degree of control over the telling of his story, a telling which had occurred largely through his bestselling memoir, and the enthusiastic, if not adoring, coverage provided by the Outdoor Life Network (which had just made the marriage official, coming aboard as an official team sponsor). There was also no questioning the fact that there were some journalists who believed Armstrong had used performance-enhancing drugs, and who would like nothing better than to bring the American down. The result of those two dynamics was that Armstrong and his people had become skilled at dividing journalists into friends and enemies, and at letting potential enemies know what lay in store for them.

When I first visited CS&E's casual-cool offices in Austin, Texas, Knaggs started things off with an office tour, lingering in front of a large aquarium filled with a dozen or so dull-looking brown fish. After ten seconds in front of the aquarium, I was ready to move on. But Knaggs wasn't. He knelt in front of the glass, gazing in. I got the distinct impression that I was meant to notice something.

"Are those piranhas?" I finally asked.

Knaggs nodded, pleased. "Look at those teeth," he murmured. "Like razors."<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->

But for now, here in the courtyard, life was good. Armstrong tip-tapped away on his BlackBerry, then tucked it in his pocket. He turned to Sheryl and Odessa. His eyes roved, checking that they were equipped with water bottles, sunglasses, jackets. Satisfied, he took his bike and wheeled it toward the door, pausing on the threshold. He smiled into the sunshine. 

It might have been the first test-day of the year, but it was also a day-a damn fine day, and now he was noticing that, too, breathing it in, letting everyone mark it together. A kick-ass day, as a matter of fact, here in Girona's maze of medieval streets, with cool facts clicking all around: the sun bouncing off the cobbles and guitar music trickling from an unseen window, the leathery old ladies scouring their porches with those bristly witches' brooms, and the bell of the cathedral exploding bong bong bong and scattering the sparrows out into the blue-and he was going to chase that day, track it down, taste it. With Armstrong, there was the feeling of heading out on a big weekend. Bags, bikes, maps, cars, rock stars-we could end up anywhere.

"Ladies," he said, ushering Sheryl and Odessa chivalrously out the door.

He walked quickly, Ferrari rushed to fall in step with him, hobbling a bit on the uneven stones.

"This new bike is fast, Michele," Armstrong said, flashing the big-weekend grin. "You're going to love it."

"And you are comfortable with your position? The feelings, they are good?"

"They're good," he said, turning to give Ferrari the high-beams. "Very good."

"We shall see, then." Ferrari was circumspect. He knew from experience that Armstrong could occasionally be romanced by the idea of something new. The conversation flagged, but only for a half-second.

"So they're working on this new jersey for Alpe d'Huez," Armstrong said. "It's made of a kind of new mesh-you know?"

"Enh?" Ferrari said, uncomprehending

"Mesh, you know?" Armstrong rubbed his thumb and index finger together. "Like a woman's stocking."

"Ahhh," Ferrari smiled lasciviously. "A woman's stocking. That is good. You will ride fast."

"Italians!" Armstrong hooted to no one in particular. "Only thinking of one thing."
 
"We think of other things," Ferrari said. "Sometimes."

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